Almost all the big characters have a lot of great motivation in Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul, fleshed out thoroughly with their lives, experiences, and showing them in their ups and downs. But not so much with the Salamancas, and chiefly with the charismatic and deadly Lalo.

There’s abuse for the cousins, drug use for Tuco, general family pride for Hector, but Lalo just… is. He doesn’t seem to live for money, he’s nearly never upset or put off by anyone, and he’s always one step ahead. The Breaking Bad universe has always felt like a Greek tragedy, and Lalo to me is the Dragon. A monster devoid of human weakness atop a hoard and able to expel all consuming fire.

In a realistic adjacent setting like this, even with other characters like him such as Gus and the other Salamancas, Lalo stands out as uniquely inhuman. In Germany we see him shrug off a blow with an ax, he sleeps like a vampire for mere hours, and he moves like a wraith beneath Gus’ army of men. His approach is warned by the flicker of a candle, the mark of some unholy abomination only held in human form.

The hyper competent Mike can’t find him, the charming Saul can’t play him, it is only Gus leaving a weapon for some reason hidden with his equipment that he can be killed. This always felt like a Deus Ex Machina, the knight getting a blessing to fell such a creature seemingly from nowhere.

It felt like a fittingly literary end for a character more and less than human to me. He dies smiling, without pain or fear, and buried deep with in the earth lest he somehow rise from the dead as he did once before.

Very pretentious, I know, but a lot of fun to write as well!